(CBS News) When I arrived in Argentina in 1983 to cover the war with
Great Britain over the Falkland Islands, I was told Argentina had no
reliable history.

Each of the country's leaders had rewritten history to play up his
accomplishments and play down (or eliminate) whatever his predecessor
had accomplished -- a frequent habit of totalitarian leaders.

In the days after Oswald shot the president, the first reaction of
many in Dallas was to bulldoze the Texas School Book Depository, as if
that might somehow erase the whole thing and the fact that it had
happened here.

Instead, community leaders decided to make it into a museum and a
center for scholarship about one of America's most terrible weekends.

They recognized that a democracy requires an accurate history, without which we cannot understand how we came to be what we are.

There had been threats of demonstrations and even violence from
scattered right-wing hate groups before Kennedy came to Dallas. But his
reception in every city, including Dallas, was overwhelmingly friendly.

The
man who shot him was anything but a right-wing zealot; he was an
itinerant loner, a loser, and a failure who had defected to the Soviet
Union. He was not from Dallas, or of Dallas.

Yet, for years, in the minds of many it was somehow Dallas' fault.

It was not, and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza has helped us understand that.

We may never understand why Oswald did it, but the assassination could have happened in any city in America.